Sony Online Entertainment PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Demo, GDC 2012

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Sony Online Entertainment is on hand here in San Francisco, California at the Moscone Center for Game Developers Conference 2012, showing off their upcoming massively multiplayer first-person shooter PlanetSide 2.

The Curse team had a chance to check out their live gameplay demo, guided along by PlanetSide 2 Creative Director Matt Higby. The original PlanetSide completely changed the way that we look at how massively multiplayer FPS games are played and PlanetSide 2 looks to do it all over again. Matt Higby takes us on a guided tour of some of PlanetSide 2's most exciting mechanics and features including the aerial and land-based vehicles as well as infantry combat.

In the full video, part one of which can be found embedded above, we get to see how PlanetSide 2's Bio Labs work. These are essentially capture point facilities found in the PlanetSide 2 game world. These Bio Labs are what players will be fighting to gain and hold control over. With them, players can utilize their resources to give their team the upper hand in battle. This means you can spawn vehicles and change your loadout, among other things.

Also featured in the video is the day/night cycle that Sony Online Entertainment has implemented to give PlanetSide 2's continent a more realistic feeling. In the video, Matt speeds up this process for us but in reality, it will run more naturally. Over the course of playing, you will gradually experience the sun setting and the map becoming dark. Rather than this being a purely aesthetic change, it actually provides tactical purposes as well. Night vision goggles are made available when the map becomes dark, and the overall dynamic of combat is change significantly as the day/night cycle progresses.

Part one is just the start of the gameplay demo! For the full four-part PlanetSide 2 gameplay demo footage, be sure to check out the playlist that we have set up on YouTube.